


Distractions

by ActualHurry



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Rivalmance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 14:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualHurry/pseuds/ActualHurry
Summary: The Renegade and the Drifter get themselves briefly separated from their Ghosts in the heart of the Ascendant Plane.





	Distractions

_“See, we thought wrong. Both of us did. We, the two of us, me and that Drifter, figured if we threw ourselves headfirst into making Gambit work, everything would fall into place thanks to persistence. Things weren’t that simple. And we weren’t much of a fireteam._

_“We’d gone into the Ascendant Plane expecting one thing and got a whole other. He wouldn’t tell me what the deal was. Not even when I pointed my cannon at him and told him he’d better ‘fess up but… I should’ve expected mystery. The Drifter talks a lot, shows the proof to make you believe, but when it comes down to answering the questions he plants in your head? Doesn’t matter what you do. He won’t stop your wheels from turnin’. He’ll just grease ‘em up and let ‘em go ‘round and ‘round again._

_“It’s enough to drive a man to some sorta edge, I’ll tell you that._

_“But we went in. Him, ‘cuz he said he needed to check up on somethin’ or another. Me, ‘cuz I hate surprises. I didn’t want him draggin’ out another nightmare only to shrug it off later and tell me I shoulda known better. So I followed after him, claiming trust. And he let me._

_“Only, we ran into something more than either of us bargained for… Got separated from our Ghosts. Stranded in the Ascendant Plane._

_Things snowballed from there as they got the tendency to.”_

– A Renegade’s Observations of a Drifter

 

Through his shattered helmet visor and cracked-through HUD, Shin glared at the Drifter. From first glance alone, nobody would be able to tell that Drifter was carrying some sharp piece of a Knight’s sword in his side. The layers of cloth and armor he sported covered most of the damage. He looked a little more restless than usual, but that wasn’t really anything new, and certainly gave nothing away. Whenever he was playing with forces he shouldn’t, he looked restless. Shin knew it well by now — for better or worse.

Shin, meanwhile… He could feel some cracked ribs every time he took a breath, the pain digging into him like no other, as deep as it was sharp. Inhaling, he counted the sparks: three, maybe four. He’d fallen from (or more accurately, gotten himself thrown off) one of the floating platforms high above. There was no telling the distance from way down here, with the odd fog and wrong atmosphere clouding his vision. Not to mention his fucked up helmet.

“What’s the plan?” Shin asked, less to know and more to stump Drifter. He sniffed hard, hurt for it, and only then tasted the blood in the back of his throat. Must have busted his face inside the helmet when he fell, which boded well for this earlier helmet model. No wonder nobody used it anymore.

“Plan,” Drifter repeated, looking way up at the Hobgoblins and Vandals scattered around the isolated edges of this space. Even those snipers were too far away now to do them any harm. Drifter idly poked at his torso, wincing. “Sit tight ‘til our Ghosts find us, brother.”

“Shit plan.”

Drifter sent a mutinous look Shin’s way. “Got anything better?” he asked in turn, too smoothly for him to be anything but annoyed.

He sure as hell didn’t, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t express his distaste for Drifter’s lack of ideas. “We’re at the bottom of a deep pit, with no light around. No Ghosts. Nothin’ for it.” Shin sniffed again. “So if we both go out like this, I want you t’know somethin’.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I think you’re a real fuckin’ asshole.”

The barking laugh in response must have hurt like a bitch with that piece of sword in him, but Drifter only wheezed about it. “ _Fuck_. Y’got me there. Ah, guess that just makes us two of a kind, brother. I like the honesty. Keep it up.”

It was likely that even punching Drifter in the throat would leave him entertained somehow. Interactions with him almost always felt like a losing battle. Shin let himself lay all the way back against the cool stone. Everything here was bone-chillingly _cold_ and well on its way to soaking right through his gear. It was nearly a relief from the burning pain in his ribs and the wrenched muscle in his shoulder. That was what he got for trying to grab a ledge on the way down.

Drifter didn’t go quiet though, not that he ever needed a reason to hear his own voice. “Reckon the Hive got any nasty diseases I need to be worried about?”

Shin stared upwards. “Plenty.”

“Like cat scratch fever, but worse.”

Shin didn’t honor that with a response.

“Hey,” Drifter said, as if Shin wasn’t ignoring him at all, “Would y’shoot me if I started frothin’ at the mouth and tried to claw at ya like a rabid Thrall?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Aw. You _do_ care.” Shin kicked him in the hip and heard him hiss in a breath. “Hey, _hey!_ Gentle. I’m hurtin’ over here.”

Shin turned his head finally, the broken visuals feeding through his helmet only giving him half the story. Drifter looked back at him, but in the dark Shin could hardly make out whatever his expression was. “Could yank it outta you,” Shin suggested. “Sure would put a fire under your Ghost.”

“You sure about that?” Drifter grinned, his teeth bright in the relative shadows.

“It must like you enough to put up with you this long,” Shin said, unsettled by the idea that even Drifter’s Ghost barely tolerated him. The dynamic between Ghost and Guardian was a good, but not foolproof, measure of integrity. But it was not without exception.

“Maybe,” said Drifter, which only bothered Shin more. Then, sly and sneaky, he added, “You could take my mind off the pain, y’know. Gimme somethin’ else to think about.”

With a comment like that, Shin could’ve shoved him further down into the abyss without thinking twice. He considered it before pushing himself up onto an elbow. He pretended not to notice Drifter sitting up a little straighter. Surely he didn’t actually think Shin was going to humor him. Shoving all the way into a sitting position once more, Shin reached for the knife on his hip.

“What’re you plannin’, pal?” Drifter asked, suspicious now. Rightly so, too.

“Takin’ your mind off it.”

Shin wrapped sure fingers around his knife’s grip and in a flash stabbed it through Drifter’s thigh. To his credit not a sound escaped him, but he did go rigid as a bowstring. It wasn’t even a particularly long knife; Shin had taken out the shortest one he had, meant more for the field than combat. He kept it there for a moment, hand still on the hilt, just watching Drifter impassively.

“Just when I think you can’t get any meaner,” Drifter gritted out. He jerked as Shin pulled the knife back out of his leg. “Y’know, I used to think I was the most heartless sonuvabitch this side a’Saturn. You just gotta go and prove me wrong.”

Shin almost smiled about it, but then Drifter grabbed his wrist, stopping him from leveraging the knife, and with his other hand, dug fingers into Shin’s side. Shin swallowed his pain and bit his tongue to stay silent, even tried to shove away from the harsh touch, but Drifter was practically in his lap and could be a fucking deadweight when he wanted to be. And right now, groping the hell out of Shin’s fucked ribs, he wasn’t going nowhere.

“Get – _off_ ,” Shin growled, yanking his wrist free, only to be stopped by Drifter grabbing the knife by the blade to steal it from him. Drifter smacked the grip into the front of his visor, less for violence and more for reprimand, and where there’d previously been four Drifters in the cracked visual input, now there was six.

Shin blinked once to get rid of the leftover blur in his eyes, just in time to watch as Drifter tossed the knife over the side of their platform. His hands twitched in outrage, blood tasting like metal in his throat. He could call heat to the tips of his fingers at any moment and singe him to a crisp. He could fire six shots before Drifter even found a trigger to pull.

“Should ditch the helmet, friend,” drawled Drifter. He put his palm flat on the front of Shin’s helm, shaking it lightly back and forth. “It’s good for nothin’, now.”

Grinding his teeth together so hard that his jaw twinged, Shin smacked Drifter’s hand away and ripped the piece of Hive sword out of Drifter’s side in one smooth motion. Drifter made some strangled noise, clutching at his torn-open flesh, and swore up a stream of curses.

But there were two dancing lights zooming closer, lapsing in and out of the fog. Shin pushed Drifter off of him and stumbled to his feet, ready to be found.

“Ghosts’re here,” he announced. “You owe me a knife.”

“Owe you shit,” Drifter spat, kneeling now, but he grinned up at Shin with something wild in his eyes. “You’d think I’d think the worst of you, huh. You stabbed me! Right in the leg. Who does that?” He worked another laugh out of his raspy throat, shaking his head. “You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

True or not, he said it like a compliment, and Shin wasn’t sure what to think about that. He waited for his Ghost to reach them, his Light like a beacon, and tried not to drive himself nuts wondering.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
